A youth sports blog written by Bob Cook. He's contributed to NBCSports.com, or MSNBC.com, if you prefer. He’s delivered sports commentaries for All Things Considered. For three years he wrote the weekly “Kick Out the Sports!” column for Flak Magazine.
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For Goose Creek High, Advancing In The South Carolina Football Playoffs Means Winning In Court And On The Field

As I posted this piece, Goose Creek, which USA Today ranks as the 11th-best high school football team in the country, is up 28-19 over Bluffton in the third quarter of its South Carolina High School League football playoff game. However, it is very possible that no matter what the outcome, Bluffton will advance to the next round. That might sound bizarre enough, except that until seven hours before kickoff, Goose Creek wasn’t even supposed to be playing tonight.

Whether Goose Creek continues on might hinge on whether authorities think of the ineligible player and school at the center are garden-variety rulebreakers, or whether the player’s special-needs status makes his case more akin to Eric Dompierre, the Ishpeming, Mich., high schooler with Down’s Syndrome whose family fought to have him reinstated.

At 12:30 p.m. Nov. 16, Circuit Judge Roger Young, in a Berkeley County courtroom, granted Goose Creek’s request to reinstate it to the state playoffs, two days after the SCHSL, in two separate votes (including a “mercy vote”), turned down the Gators’ appeal over being tossed out for using an ineligible player. Goose Creek had beaten Conway High on Nov. 9, but an update to the player’s transcript appeared to show he had played basketball at another school as a freshman, and thus was in his fifth year as a high school student-athlete, one more year than the SCHSL allows. (According to testimony, the student is on his third high school, having enrolled at Goose Creek just this fall.) Goose Creek discovered and reported the updated transcript. And then, the SCHSL kicked out Goose Creek, meaning Conway would travel to Bluffton for the Nov. 16 game. As Young walked into his courtroom to make his decision, Conway, located near Myrtle Beach, was getting ready to warm up the buses for the football team’s four-hour drive south to Bluffton, which was preparing its field for the game. After Young left, Bluffton had to scramble to get buses and the road crew ready for the two-hour drive north to Goose Creek, near Charleston.

But Young didn’t give Goose Creek a free pass for the rest of the playoffs. His ruling merely ordered the SCHSL to hold an open hearing on Mon., Nov. 19, to reconsider Goose Creek’s case. So it’s possible Goose Creek could win on Friday, and lose on Monday. The crux of Goose Creek’s case goes like this (and I’ll follow with my non-lawyer legal analysis). First, the player barely saw action — only 17 plays during the season. That’s the weakest part of the case. Ineligible is ineligible, no matter how many games were played. Second, the player spent a year in a youth home during what would have been his freshman year, and though he was technically assigned to a high school, he never set foot on campus — and SCHSL rules state the eligibility clock doesn’t start until a student physically steps onto a high school campus.

And third, and what could be the basis of a lawsuit if SCHSL sticks to its guns, is that the player, as a foster child with special needs, should be governed by federal disability rules, which could then allow him to stay on the roster. In Dompierre’s case in Michigan, the family argued along those lines, in that the reason Dompierre was a 19-year-old senior (making him too old to play on a high school roster) was because his Down’s Syndrome-related issues slowed him early on in his schooling. Many high school athletic associations have exceptions for special needs students (The Michigan High School Athletic Association didn’t, which is why the Dompierre family had to fight to allow him to play), and South Carolina seems to have a few in its constitution. For example:

Conditions which produce severe and unusual emotional conditions which, in turn created a debilitating personal non-athletic hardship which would have prevented a reasonable student under similar circumstances from satisfactorily completing a school year or would have prevented a reasonable student under similar circumstances from remaining at the sending school.

From what I’ve seen, Goose Creek has focused more on when the clock started on his eligibility, not on any emotional conditions or other special needs the player might have. But Goose Creek Coach Chuck Reedy, to media and to the SCHSL, has spoken about trying to “save” this player. Media assembled outside the closed SCHSL hearing reported — judging by what they could hear through the door — Reedy crying about the impact of the ruling on all his players, with an emphasis on the player deemed ineligible.

While I don’t personally know the player involved in this case, I do know that with more special-needs students in schools, more issues like this will come up. State high school associations are going to have to be ready to look at their rule books, and make them less black-and-white when it comes to eligibility. Michigan’s resistance, at first, to allow Dompierre’s eligibility was rooted in the idea that suddenly schools would create all sorts of academic exceptions that would allow star players on the roster. I can understand not wanting schools to magically determine that the star quarterback has all sort of issues that prevent him from making his grades. But state high school associations, as Michigan did to allow Dompierre to keep playing, are waking up and creating rules that clearly spell out how a school can allow a special-needs student to be part of a team without creating an unusual competitive advantage.

I don’t know that having such rules in place would have prevented the Goose Creek situation specifically. While Dompierre had spent his whole life in the Ispheming, Mich., school system, a big part of the problem at Goose Creek was the player there had bounced around so many places that the school had trouble getting all his background paperwork together. Still, I hope that whatever happens, the SCHSL revisits its rules to ensure that problems like this are solved well before chaos ensues, and before a game is played where it’s not clear whether the winner or loser advances to the next round.

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Susan, Conway and Bluffton fairly played Goose Creek and LOST! How do you see that it is “unfair to Bluffton and Conway?” By the way, get a heart! Coach Reedy was doing a wonderful thing by letting “John Doe” play in the games. John Doe participated and will probably never forget how he felt. The Gators did not win all of those games because John Doe played. He only played when the team was ahead by 41 points. Get YOUR facts straight!!!

Part I: Following the rules in place is what a player from last year wishing to advance as a Bobcat yet could not, special needs as well. However he would have been in his 5th years this season and himself not able, case taken to the same league committee. The difference, Coach Cribb did it in advance, following the rules and respected the decision of SCHSL Rep Singleton. The player did not play – he came to all games as a Fan for his team/friends. Part II: Bluffton was told play Conway – so both teams practice according to whom they play. To pull the rug on 2 other teams just hours before kickoff, claiming to have a good reason for holding the truth aside, no matter how you twist it – still wrong & against league rules. Hey I appreicate the coach & his feelings, so he should have said to the teams and league, we will be playing John Doe – and will give up a chance in the Playoffs…did he do that?? Yeah didnt think so…